Review of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

In her new book, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Astra Taylor provides a smart, critical look on how the rhetoric of new media gurus and the proliferation of corporate technology platforms obscure unjust socioeconomic relationships. As she argues, we often lose sight of the ways that, “Many of the problems that plagued our media system before the Internet was widely adopted have carried over into the digital domain—consolidation, centralization, and commercialism—and will continue to shape it.” In my review essay for Dissent Magazine I take a look at why Taylor’s book is an important addition to the otherwise overstocked shelves of sugar-coated paeans about the wonders of tech.